The president and Mrs. Bush began the day with a family breakfast before a prayer service at St. John's church across a snowy Lafayette Park from the White House.
Unprecedented security surrounds this 55th presidential inauguration with a maze of metal gates and barriers along the parade route and two rows of dump trucks blocking Pennsylvania Avenue.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will take their oaths of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. In his inaugural address, President Bush will say the best hope for peace in the world is expanding freedom.
He will say that events and common sense have led Americans to the conclusion that liberty at home increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other countries. According to excerpts of the speech released by the White House, the president will say that America has need of idealism and courage because there is essential work within the country to secure what he will call the unfinished work of American freedom.
The president won a close election and returns to office in a nation with deep political divisions. A number of public polls show him with one of the lowest approval ratings for a president elected to a second term in the past 50 years.
